How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of 'Intangibles' in Business

Anything can be measured. This bold assertion is the key to solving many problems in business and life in general. The myth that certain things can't be measured is a significant drain on our nation's economy, public welfare, the environment, and even national security. In fact, the chances are good that some part of your life or your professional responsibilities is greatly harmed by a lack of measurement---by you, your firm, or even your government.

Paleofantasy

We evolved to eat berries rather than bagels, to live in mud huts rather than condos, to sprint barefoot rather than play football - or did we? Are our bodies and brains truly at odds with modern life? Although it may seem as though we have barely had time to shed our hunter-gatherer legacy, biologist Marlene Zuk reveals that the story is not so simple. Popular theories about how our ancestors lived - and why we should emulate them - are often based on speculation, not scientific evidence. Armed with a razor-sharp wit and brilliant, eye-opening research, Zuk takes us to the cutting edge of biology to show that evolution can work much faster than was previously realized.

Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class - and What We Can Do About It

Our founding fathers worked hard to ensure that a small group of wealthy people would never dominate this country. Thomas Jefferson believed that our very democracy depends upon our ability to play referee to the game of business, protecting labor and the public good. But over the last 25 years, we've witnessed an undeclared war against the middle class.

Procrastinate on Purpose: 5 Permissions to Multiply Your Time

New York Times best-selling author and sales-performance trainer Rory Vaden brings his high-energy approach and can-do spirit to the most nagging problem in our professional lives: stalled productivity. Millions are overworked, organizationally challenged, or have a motivation issue that's holding them back. Vaden presents a simple yet powerful paradigm that will set listeners free to do their best work - on time and without stress and anxiety.

At the Edge of Uncertainty: 11 Discoveries Taking Science by Surprise

The atom, the big bang, DNA, natural selection - all are ideas that have revolutionized science; and all were dismissed out of hand when they first appeared. The surprises haven't stopped in recent years, and in At the Edge of Uncertainty, best-selling author Michael Brooks investigates the new wave of radical insights that are shaping the future of scientific discovery.

Wealth, Poverty, and Politics: An International Perspective

In Wealth, Poverty, and Politics, Thomas Sowell, one of the foremost conservative public intellectuals in the country, argues that political and ideological struggles have led to dangerous confusion about income inequality in America. Pundits and politically motivated economists trumpet ambiguous statistics and sensational theories while ignoring the true determinant of income inequality: the production of wealth.

NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity

What is autism: a lifelong disability or a naturally occurring form of cognitive difference akin to certain forms of genius? In truth, it is both of these things and more - and the future of our society depends on our understanding it. Wired reporter Steve Silberman unearths the secret history of autism, long suppressed by the same clinicians who became famous for discovering it, and finds surprising answers to the crucial question of why the number of diagnoses has soared in recent years.

Farmageddon: The True Cost of Cheap Meat

Farm animals have been disappearing from our fields as the production of food has become a global industry. We no longer know for certain what is entering the food chain and what we are eating - as the UK horsemeat scandal demonstrated. We are reaching a tipping point as the farming revolution threatens our countryside, health, and the quality of our food wherever we live in the world.

Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business

Whole Foods Market cofounder John Mackey and professor and Conscious Capitalism, Inc. cofounder Raj Sisodia argue for the inherent good of both business and capitalism. Featuring some of today's best-known and most-successful companies, they illustrate how these two forces can - and do - work most powerfully to create value for all stakeholders, including customers, employees, suppliers, investors, society, and the environment.

The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human

V. S. Ramachandran is at the forefront of his field - so much so that Richard Dawkins dubbed him the "Marco Polo of neuroscience". Now, in a major new work, Ramachandran sets his sights on the mystery of human uniqueness. Taking us to the frontiers of neurology, he reveals what baffling and extreme case studies can teach us about normal brain function and how it evolved.

Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few

In Saving Capitalism, Robert Reich reveals the entrenched cycles of power and influence that have damaged American capitalism, perpetuating a new oligarchy in which the 1 percent get ever richer and the rest - middle and working class alike - lose ever more economic agency, making for the greatest income inequality and wealth disparity since World War II.

Empire of Cotton: A Global History

Here is the story of how, beginning well before the advent of machine production in the 1780s, these men captured ancient trades and skills in Asia, combined them with the expropriation of lands in the Americas and the enslavement of African workers to crucially recast the disparate realms of cotton that had existed for millennia. We see how industrial capitalism then reshaped these worlds of cotton into an empire, and how this empire transformed the world.

The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East

In The Fall of the Ottomans, award-winning historian Eugene Rogan brings the First World War and its immediate aftermath in the Middle East to vivid life, uncovering the often ignored story of the region's crucial role in the conflict.

Gorilla Mindset

Applying Gorilla Mindset to your life (make no mistake, this is an audiobook you must apply) will improve your health and fitness, lead to more money and career advancement, and help you have deeper, more meaningful relationships (or more casual ones; it's your choice). Your thinking will become clear. You will have more focus. You will know exactly what steps to take to change your life. More importantly, you will be able to troubleshoot your own life.

The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914

The fateful quarter-century leading up to World War I was a time when the world of privilege still existed in Olympian luxury and the world of protest was heaving in its pain, its power, and its hate. The age was the climax of a century of the most accelerated rate of change in history, a cataclysmic shaping of destiny.

Soul of An Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness

Sy Montgomery's popular 2011 Orion magazine piece, "Deep Intellect", about her friendship with a sensitive, sweet-natured octopus named Athena and the grief she felt at her death, went viral, indicating the widespread fascination with these mysterious, almost alien-like creatures. Since then Sy has practiced true immersion journalism, from New England aquarium tanks to the reefs of French Polynesia and the Gulf of Mexico, pursuing these wild, solitary shape-shifters.

No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life

What is life? What is my place in it? What choices do these questions obligate me to make? More than a half-century after it burst upon the intellectual scene - with roots that extend to the mid-19th century - Existentialism's quest to answer these most fundamental questions of individual responsibility, morality, and personal freedom, life has continued to exert a profound attraction.

Your Deceptive Mind: A Scientific Guide to Critical Thinking Skills

No skill is more important in today's world than being able to think about, understand, and act on information in an effective and responsible way. What's more, at no point in human history have we had access to so much information, with such relative ease, as we do in the 21st century. But because misinformation out there has increased as well, critical thinking is more important than ever. These 24 rewarding lectures equip you with the knowledge and techniques you need to become a savvier, sharper critical thinker in your professional and personal life.

Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.

Titan is the first full-length biography based on unrestricted access to Rockefeller’s exceptionally rich trove of papers. A landmark publication full of startling revelations, the book indelibly alters our image of this most enigmatic capitalist. Born the son of a flamboyant, bigamous snake-oil salesman and a pious, straitlaced mother, Rockefeller rose from rustic origins to become the world’s richest man by creating America’s most powerful and feared monopoly, Standard Oil. Branded "the Octopus" by legions of muckrakers, the trust refined and marketed nearly 90 percent of the oil produced in America.

Dish up the red meat, eggs, and whole milk! In this well-researched and captivating narrative, veteran food writer Nina Teicholz proves how everything we've been told about fat is wrong. For decades, Americans have cut back on red meat and dairy products full of "bad" saturated fats. We obediently complied with nutritional guidelines to eat "heart healthy" fats found in olive oil, fish, and nuts, and followed a Mediterranean diet heavy on fruits, vegetables, and grains. Yet the nation's health has declined. What is going on?

Food: A Cultural Culinary History

Eating is an indispensable human activity. As a result, whether we realize it or not, the drive to obtain food has been a major catalyst across all of history, from prehistoric times to the present. Epicure Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin said it best: "Gastronomy governs the whole life of man."

Dream Year: Make the Leap from a Job You Hate to a Life You Love

What if someone could guide you, step-by-step, as you identify, plan, and launch your dream career - in just one year. That's what Ben Arment does in his transformative coaching class, which has helped hundreds of people reinvent their lives to enjoy greater enthusiasm and fulfillment while also making a living. Now he's sharing his best insights, advice, and inspiring true stories in Dream Year. You'll find out how people just like you are discovering (or rediscovering) what they were truly born to do, then following a proven process to make it real.

Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory

Traveling from New York to Los Angeles, Stockholm to Korea, John Seabrook visits specialized teams composing songs in digital labs with novel techniques, and he traces the growth of these contagious hits from their origins in early '90s Sweden to their ubiquity on today's charts. Featuring the stories of artists like Katy Perry, Britney Spears, and Rihanna as well as expert songsmiths like Max Martin, Ester Dean, and Dr. Luke, The Song Machine will change the way you listen to music.

Publisher's Summary

The father of cognitive neuroscience and author of Human offers a provocative argument against the common belief that our lives are wholly determined by physical processes and we are therefore not responsible for our actions.

A powerful orthodoxy in the study of the brain has taken hold in recent years: Since physical laws govern the physical world and our own brains are part of that world, physical laws therefore govern our behavior and even our conscious selves. Free will is meaningless, goes the mantra; we live in a “determined” world.

Not so, argues the renowned neuroscientist Michael S. Gazzaniga in this thoughtful, provocative book based on his Gifford Lectures - one of the foremost lecture series in the world dealing with religion, science, and philosophy. Who's in Charge? proposes that the mind, which is somehow generated by the physical processes of the brain, “constrains” the brain just as cars are constrained by the traffic they create. Writing with what Steven Pinker has called “his trademark wit and lack of pretension”, Gazzaniga shows how determinism immeasurably weakens our views of human responsibility; it allows a murderer to argue, in effect, “It wasn’t me who did it - it was my brain.” Gazzaniga convincingly argues that even given the latest insights into the physical mechanisms of the mind, there is an undeniable human reality: We are responsible agents who should be held accountable for our actions, because responsibility is found in how people interact, not in brains.

An extraordinary book that ranges across neuroscience, psychology, ethics, and the law with a light touch but profound implications, Who’s in Charge? is a lasting contribution from one of the leading thinkers of our time.

For those who want to make a quick decision, just read the above headline. For those who would like to thoroughly research this book before committing, go to the FREE "Brain Science Podcast" and listen to episode # 82. (In fact, if you are at all interested in the Mind/Brain, I strongly suggest you subscribe to this Audible sponsored podcast. It led me to this wonderful world of audiobooks.) For those in between, here is my take on it. Dr. Gazzaniga is the father of research into split brain patients (this procedure for epilepsy has been replaced by less damaging ones, so there will be little research in the future). His work seems to have heavily influenced our present understanding of the brain, and a lot of that understanding is presented in this work. While I thought I knew quite a bit for a layman, there was not one part of this book that I could skip through, all of it was engaging, even the familiar parts. While there are other books I could recommend that specialize in certain areas, "Who's In Charge" covers most of the current popular topics, such as Self, Consciousness, Free Will, and Morality and touches on Chaos Theory and Emergence. To me, there were no low points here. nor is anything too complicated for the unitiated. I cannot see anybody being disappointed in purchasing this book, and believe you could have saved time and effort, by just following the advice in the headline.

Although the author purports to address the issue of free will from a neuroscience point of view he goes off on many, many tangents and is oddly reticent to make any firm assertions.

He gives a good tour of the current state of what we understand about how the brain works. This is meant to set the stage for addressing the question of whether brain chemistry and wiring pre-determines out decisions or if free will really exists. However, although he asserts that he thinks free will exists he does not create any structured arguments to support his belief. Either he feels the evidence speaks for itself (in which case he has over-estimated his audience) or his hypothesis never crystallized in his mind.

As an experienced neuroscientist he has a masterful grasp of the subject (although I found his frequent, parenthetical comments of "so-and-so, who worked in a lab across campus from me" did not add anything to the story.) Not only does he understand what he is writing about, but he has thought deeply about the implications and he presents the material accurately.

I found the performance to be rather snarky and it distracted from the text.

The survey of current neuroscience makes the book worth reading, but I think he does a disservice to claim the book is about free will.

This was a good book. There were two or three really mind-blowing concepts that I hadn't heard before. But I give it fewer stars because (1) it doesn't really spend very much time on the titular question -- specifically "free will". It's really a book about how the brain works, which is really interesting to me, but this book's not as good as David Eagleman's "Incognito", in my opinion. (2) It spends quite a bit of time on how current neuroscience impacts law and courtroom proceedings. Those parts seemed repetitive and dull to me.

This book is not the kind of thing you want to get distracted from while listening. It's rather technical at certain points. Even if you listen perfectly, you may have the sense from time to time that you must have missed something.

I realized while listening that I've read a lot recently about moral psychology, rationality, evolution/epigenetics and neuroscience, so there was a lot of material I had read or heard before. If you've been keeping up with Jonathan Haidt, Stephen Pinker, etc, you'll already be familiar with a good bit of what's here. However, if you are interested in one of these subjects and haven't read up much on them lately, I think you'd enjoy the book.

The author's tone of voice is ... well, hilarious. It's like a man reading with a perpetual smirk while waiting for his next martini to be stirred, not shaken, because he knows, thankyouverymuch, that you don't shake martinis, for the love of all that's holy. (I've done my best to give you a sense of his voice in the text I've written -- a nearly impossible feat, but if you have a listen, you might see what I mean.) I'd choose to listen to this reader again, but I have a feeling his tone is not for everyone.

There's a lot of technical stuff. You may or may not remember as much as you'd like once it's over, but it's a good overview of where we are with understanding consciousness in the early 21st century. Also, it's not a terribly long book, and the illustrations are often amusing, so it's worth taking a chance on, IMHO.

Brain expert Michael Gazzaniga uses physics, psychology, neurology and sociology in this fascinating and enlightening argument that we are, in fact, in charge of our own lives. Like Daniel Dennett in Elbow Room and Steven Pinker in How The Mind Works, Gazzaniga addresses the problem of the supposed "deterministic" nature of the physical universe and how it is that we escape moral determinism in our decision making, living in this world and having a brain made of matter. He puts to rest what Dennett calls a "philosophical bugbear" with wit and good sense, showing us what we really knew all along--despite the physical nature of our brains, we are in charge of what we do with it.

Michael Gazzaniga (Psychological Science; Cognitive Neuroscience; The Ethical Brain) now has produced Who’s in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain. Gazzaniga is a well known expert in cognitive neuroscience, but this book makes the topic easy to follow and readily available to anyone willing to turns its pages. Most important, this book brings neuroscience and philosophy together. The result is a deeper understanding of free will as experienced (or thought experienced) by individuals. Gazzaniga would have been more helpful to me had he defined what he means by free will. I would have greatly benefited from having such a guide post. Such context would have been helpful. Nonetheless, the book is thought provoking and helpful from both the philosophical and the neuroscience perspectives. It will certainly make the reader stop and think. The reading of Pete Larkin is well done.

The author speaks with authority when he describes the working of the mind. Many of the other books I've been reading recently had mentioned the author's experiments on the hemispheres in the brain and how the mind works. Often, a primary researcher is not gifted at explaining, but Gazzaniga is.

In the book he does cite an official definition of consciousness that states that there are over 10000 scientific articles about consciousness and none of them add to our understanding. Who we are and what we are is just not easily understood, but this book does bring me closer to understanding.

The book also delves around a little with quantum physics and evolution. As usual, when an expert in another field, in this case neuroscience, and writes well in his own field, he writes even better when talking about other fields.

The book won't appeal to someone who wants absolute answers, because the understanding of the questions he is addressing are still fuzzy. Anyone, whose interest about neuroscience has been aroused and wants to know more about the right left brain will enjoy this well written book.

Maybe neuroscience isn't the best topic to listen to. I just didn't find myself eager to listen after a while. I was most attentive when he talked about specific examples with patients, moral dilemmas, split brain patients, how the interpreter comes up with absurd explanations for situations, and bizarre brain disorders. Too much detail, and not enough of a compelling storyline in my view. But I guess that's just how my brain perceived it, ;-)

a fairly well written and interesting review of the state of neuroscience literature, the most interesting pieces are the case study split brain findings and the interplay between decision making and the interpreter module. the dive into the legal system was more philosophical than evidence driven, I wish he would've used that space to explore more about corollaries in other sciences. overall, worth your time for the many pondering points in understanding what a human is.